


I Was Born to Endure This Kind of Weather

by thatdamneddame



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Electrocution, Gen, M/M, Minor Character Death, Off-screen Character Death, Pre-Slash, Season/Series 01, background underage relationships, canonical character violence, hunter!Derek, season 1 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-27
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2018-01-06 07:22:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1104039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatdamneddame/pseuds/thatdamneddame
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s a mistake to return to Beacon Hills. Derek knows this in his bones. But there are werewolves in Beacon Hills and Laura has gone missing.</p>
<p>Or the alternate universe where the Hales are Hunters and the Argents are werewolves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Was Born to Endure This Kind of Weather

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this fic last year, November 2012, before season 3a came out. For my sanity, I chose to finish this fic like season 3 never happened, i.e. sorry Cora, I'll write you another time. This is a season 1 AU, though, so it doesn't really chaange all that much. Promise.
> 
> As always, all my thanks go to prettyasadiagram who is the reason I ever finished writing this, and then who helped me write an ending I don't detest with all of my being. She also always says, "I need to buy some wine," whenever I tell her I'm going to send her a fic to beta. It's hard not to love someone like that.
> 
> Triggers: Because this fic is a season 1 AU, and so it deals with Kate Argent and her whole brand of crazy--past underage sex, manipulating Derek, arson, murder, and torture. I've tried not to make her any worse than she already was on the show, but she was really pretty terrible on the show. There are no graphic scenes of violence or underage sex, but still, if you're not sure, read with caution or ask me and I'll help you as best I can. And, please, if I don't have anything tagged properly or adequately, let me know so I can fix it.
> 
> Last but not least, title comes from "Emmylou" by First Aid Kit.

_You’re gonna feel alone._   
_You’re gonna feel afraid._   
_Let the water clear itself_   
_Watch it all fall into place_

           -from “The Call” by Damion Suomi and the Minor Prophets

  

It’s a mistake to return to Beacon Hills. Derek knows this in his bones. But Laura is gone. Laura has taken his jacket and she has taken her car and she left a note— _I’m going to set things right. Don’t wait up._ —on the back of their grocery list, and goddamn it, isn’t that just like Laura: why find a new piece of paper when their shopping list is pinned to the fridge, untouched for far too long.

Derek checks his phone and he checks his phone and he goes out buys everything on that damn list, uses the fucking coupons Laura spent an entire Sunday clipping. When he gets back, he even puts the butter in the fridge and not the cupboard like she always bitches at him to do. But Laura is still MIA, if _gone for 48 hours and left a note_ counts as missing.

(Derek has known Laura his entire life. He knows it does.)

He checks his email on the morning of the third day. He checks his email, even though they both hate email because it’s bullshit the amount of spam they get and the only people they really know are each other.

There is one new message in his Inbox. He reads it. He drinks a glass of orange juice because he poured it before he logged in and _waste not want not_ their mother had always said. And then he’s hot wiring the neighbor’s Chevy because Beacon Hills is a two days drive away and there is nothing Derek wouldn’t do for his sister.

 

***

 

(When Derek leaves he doesn’t lock up, tells himself it’s because he’ll be back soon and doesn’t listen to that part of himself that knows he’s driving into his past and there is no way to come back from that. His glass sits by the sink, rinsed and ready to be put away. His laptop sits open, email displaying one new message: _shit just got real_.

Laura was never one for hyperbole.)

 

***

 

Beacon Hills is just like he remembers it, except maybe worse.

His family has been dead for a while now, but, at least before they ran away, before she went missing, he’d had Laura. What’s left of their house stands, a burnt monument to what once was, and it’s such a fucking metaphor for his life that Derek sort of wants to laugh and sort of wants to cry. Instead, he ends up camping out in the old living room because it’s the only room that looks like it could still be load bearing.

Well, that’s not true. There’s his old room upstairs—it has three walls and enough of a roof to count as a decent place to stay, but that’s where Laura’s things are. The sheets on the bed are crumpled into Laura’s usual nest, her pajamas flung over the chair, her phone plugged into a small generator to charge. There’s a whole stack of provisions sitting in the corner, Laura clearly meant business, but Derek can’t bring himself to touch it.

She could always come back, he finds himself thinking, when Derek never used to be one for false hope.

 

***

 

Derek spends the day checking out all of his old haunts except not really. There are the bleachers that he used to sneak cigarettes and kisses with Kate Argent behind. There’s the lookout where Kate taught him that her claws could be _fun_ and not at all deadly like his parents promised. There’s where he killed his first wolf. The church where his uncle was married, his cousin was baptized, his grandfather buried. For whatever else Beacon Hills will ever be to him, it will always be the town where Derek grew up.

He doesn’t say hi to Mrs. Wilkins at the florist where his mom used to moonlight. He doesn’t swing by the precinct and see if Officer Stilinski is still there. Those are good places. Those are happy places. They are not for him.

But there, abandoned in the parking lot of one of the more advanced hiking trails, is his sister’s car. Leaves scattered across the windshield, paint gleaming black like an omen. It belongs on the sleek highways of Los Angeles, the roads of Las Vegas, the streets of New York City. It is not something of the woods. It does not belong here, and neither, Derek thinks, do the Hale kids.

They left for a reason, after all.

 

***

 

Laura is not on the main trail, but Derek didn’t really think she would be sitting there waiting for him. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and Laura said, _fuck that shit_ , and took out a machete and made her own way.

(Except two roads diverged in a yellow wood and one said _caution: keep out_ and Derek picked it anyways and his family has been paying for it ever since.)

 

***

 

Derek walks five miles through the preserve to the gas station and spends way too much money on gasoline.

“You good man?” The cashier asks. His ears are gauged and he has _love_ and _hate_ tattooed across his knuckles. Derek thinks that this is a man who has never felt warm blood on his hands. Who doesn’t know, at the end of the day, that love and hate are the same thing and if Derek had three wishes he’d wish to just stop feeling anything anymore. That Derek would let the other two wishes wither and die because what else is there but maybe not hurting quite so much.

But Derek bites down his urge to yell, to rip the five-hour energies and beef jerky from their shelves, and grits out, “I’m good,” instead.

 

***

 

At night, Derek knows better than to go into the woods. The walls are thin but the house was made of mountain ash, even if it’s mostly just cinders at this point. He holds his aconite bullets close and hopes the rain washes away his scent.

 

***

 

There are people in the woods. Derek wakes at night to hear sirens and dogs and the shouts of men. Beacon Hills is a small town and the forest is large. The police don’t come to the woods without reason.

Derek lies awake and imagines that he can hear Laura’s footsteps on the front porch. _Get up loser, shit’s going down_. He ignores the bitter taste of ash on his tongue. He hopes the cops don’t find what Derek’s scared they’re looking for.

He falls back asleep to the sound of rain. He dreams of Laura and her Camaro, half crazed with grief and driving them out of town, telling Derek that they were never fucking going back.

 

***

 

He is too late, of course. He wishes this were a surprise.

Derek hasn’t cried in six years, but he cries for Laura. Sits in the forest like a little lost boy and all he wants to hold his sister’s hand one last time, but he can hear his dad in his ear, _Don’t leave prints, son, the police still have their job to do_ , so he cuts off a lock of her hair and holds that instead.

In the end he decides, _fuck it_. His family is dead, torn apart and burnt alive by wolves. They can’t have this, though. They can’t have her.

Carrying the torso of his dead sister through the woods is the worst day of Derek’s life.

 

***

 

He rings her body in aconite. _Stay back_ , Derek thinks, planting a warning in flowers. _I’m coming for you_.

 

***

 

“I know,” says a voice in the distance, “maybe it was a werewolf. Rrrrrr!”

Derek’s heart skips a beat and he stands frozen, foot hovering above the ground.

“I’m serious, Stiles!” comes the reply. The voices still have that whine of youth, the easy laughter of people who are too young to know any better.

Derek can hear their clumsy footsteps, can see their heads breaking through the underbrush.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” agrees the first voice. He looks maybe sixteen or seventeen with a shorn head, long limbs, and wide, guileless eyes. “Just show me where you found the body.”

Derek is standing where his sister was torn apart. Derek is standing just yards away from where two high schoolers are about to stumble upon something they should have never seen in the first place, let alone come back for. He doesn’t really have a choice. He steps out from the underbrush.

“What are you doing here?” Derek asks, blocks their way with his body. The first boy gapes a little and the other, shorter with a mop of dark hair, looks deeply suspicious. “This is private property.” He tells them, and it’s true: the Hale trust is old and it once meant something. It’s been six years, but this was once Derek’s home. And even without money and power, this is where his family died. They have salted the earth with their blood and it is theirs now, forever.

“Sorry, we didn’t know,” says the first boy, honest.

“We were just looking for something,” the second boy apologizes, “Forget it, though. Sorry to bother you.” The boy wheezes, tries to look innocent, and things slot into place.

There was an inhaler by Laura’s body. The blue plastic of hospitals, laying innocently next to Laura who ran track in high school, who their mother was always yelling at to _slow down_ , who hasn’t been to the doctor since their family died. It sits in Derek’s pocket now, as a mystery to be solved about Laura’s final hours.

Derek throws it to the second boy, returns it to whom it belongs, and turns to leave. _They’re just kids_ , Derek thinks, and even then, he knows that doesn’t mean much.

 

***

 

(“His whole family burned to death in a fire,” comes the excited whisper after him. That’s all Derek is now, he thinks. Fire and revenge.)

 

***

 

Once upon a time Derek Hale had a family. He had a mother and a father and a sister. He had uncles and aunts and cousins too. They lived in this mansion on a hill and they kept people safe. They lived by the code and worked honest jobs and, if Derek is honest with himself, he was happy, underneath angst of youth.

But now Derek is alone. He buried his parents and then years later he buried his sister, what he could find of her, with his own two hands. There is blood under his nails, and some things cannot be undone, cannot be taken back. But they can be set right.

He does not know who killed Laura, but he has an idea. He does not know why it happened, but he’s going to find out. At long last, Derek is going to fix his mistakes.

 

***

 

There is nothing to be done about his uncle. There was never anything to be done.

He taught Derek how to play chess, once. It didn’t stick. Derek wouldn’t mind learning again. Has learned a few things in recent years about patience, about thinking ahead. He wishes he had paid attention then; learned his lessons when they were given freely.

Now his uncle, with a mind so sharp, sits in a room, a prisoner in his own body, if he even has a mind to speak of anymore.

“I’m sorry we left you,” Derek tells him. The words feel like they’re being scraped out of him, but they need to be said. “It was always the plan. We didn’t know what else to do.”

His uncle sits, unblinking. There’s nothing for Derek here.

 

***

 

(He goes back though. Once a week, sometimes more. He’s still Derek’s uncle. He’s still family. Eventually the nurses forgive him.)

 

***

 

The Argents don’t live in their little house by the woods anymore. This is not a surprise. After the fire, everyone left. The truce was broken. The only way back to peace was through blood, and enough of that had been spilled.

Beacon Hills became a no man’s land, a scar, a tomb, a reminder. There should be no one left here who would want Laura dead.

 

***

 

He doesn’t want to go through her things. She’s buried now, his sister, and this room is all he has left—a picture of her final day. Derek carried her body through the woods, buried her in the backyard, but there’s something final about rummaging. About going through and sorting and making what was once _hers_ into _his_. But, Derek thinks, his is no longer a life of easy choices.

There’s two missed calls on Laura’s phone. There is a list of addresses in the pocket of her jeans. There’s a hot pot in the corner and packets of ramen in a bear-proof bag. If nothing else, at least Derek has dinner.

The messages give Derek two names, but nothing else. The addresses are unfamiliar to him, but it’s been six years—Beacon Hills is no longer his town.

 

***

 

On Wednesday, the police come.

The only reason he doesn’t resist arrest is because he’s not sure what would happen if he did. Derek sees red and he thinks that if he let any of his anger—or grief or fear—out, he would burn the whole town down. He would paint the town in the blood of wolves, let them suffer how he suffered. But these men, they are not of Derek’s world; they do not understand.

Instead, Derek sits in the back of a patrol car and watches as his sister’s body is exhumed from the earth, stolen from her final resting place.

(Behind a rusting jeep, clearly not police issue, are the two boys from the woods. Only the shorter one has the decency to look uncomfortable. All Derek can think is, _they think they’re doing the right thing_.)

 

***

 

He sees, too, when the Sheriff recognizes him. Sees when the deputy hands over Derek’s name and something like shock and something like sadness passes over the Sheriff’s face.

 

***

 

“We didn’t know anyone was even out there,” the Sheriff tells him. “When did you get back in town, son?”

Derek bristles at the epithet. “A little while ago.”

The Sheriff frowns and, for a brief moment, he stops looking like a cop and starts looking like the guy his dad used to go drinking with on the weekend. “You kids skipped town not two days after the funeral. What happened?”

Derek just shrugs. There is no answer to that.

 

***

 

(Life happened. Death happened. They were just kids. There was a plan, there was always a plan, but someone besides Laura was supposed to be alive to see it through. There are too many answers and none of them sit right under Derek’s skin. _What happened?_ Derek wants to answer, _what didn’t?_ )

 

***

 

The truth is, Derek was orphaned when he was fifteen-years-old. Derek ran away with his sister and they cobbled themselves a life in motels and halfway houses. Jail is not the worst place he’s spent the night, but at least back then, sleeping in a bus terminal, he’d had Laura there too, curled against his side, always there for him no matter what.

Derek still has the lock of her hair. He holds it tight.

 

***

 

“Well,” the Sheriff says in the morning, “looks like you were telling the truth.”

There is a pause where Derek thinks he’s supposed to say something, but there’s nothing really to say.

The Sheriff sighs. “I’m sorry, son, I didn’t realize. Your sister was a good kid.” He pauses again and then seems to realize that Derek really isn’t going to speak up. “Do you know what she was doing here? Why she would have come back?”

And Derek can give the Sheriff this, can say, “I wish I did,” as easy as breathing. That mystery is all Derek has now. All he is. It’s not giving too much away to say that.

“If you need anything,” the Sheriff tells him, concern creasing around his eyes, “just call me.” He puts his hand on Derek’s shoulder, lets the posture of law enforcement melt from his bones. “You were a good kid too. I remember that.”

Derek wishes that were still true.

 

***

 

Derek’s coat sits on the back-seat of Laura’s car and the radio is preprogrammed to NPR and the local pop station. There’s a Glock in the glove box and wolfsbane bullets in the false bottom of the trunk.

Dad would have never let Laura get the car if he was alive. “Something practical,” their dad had begged, feigning authority, as Laura searched for her first car, Derek trudging along beside them because he was thirteen and young enough to be forced to go on these sorts of horrible family field trips.

“But this one looks _dangerous_ ,” Laura had said, picking out a two-door muscle car the color of the night sky.

Dad had just frowned, crossed his arms across his chest, and seemed to realize that Laura wasn’t actually going to listen to anything other than force. “And it drives off road? Or are you just going to hunt wolves who stick to motorways and obey the speed limit?”

Derek remembers that Laura had scowled, but when she brought home her new car, some old jeep that looked dangerous in a whole different way, she couldn’t stop smiling. And then she kidnapped him to drive around town all day, blasting pop songs on the radio and buying them ice cream that Derek only pretended to eat under duress.

Of course, Derek also remembers the funeral. Remembers how Laura had changed, had hardened. How she had gone to the dealership and had taken what money she could get from their meticulously maintained trust, and bought herself a car that looked as dangerous as Derek felt. Laura had loved that car.

Now Derek drives his sister’s car and listens to “A Prairie Home Companion” and feels like his sister is still here with him. In some strange way, he feels like he’s home.

 

***

 

_You’re not a suspect_ , Sheriff Stilinski had said, _but try not to skip town again_. Not that Derek would leave; he has a list of addresses and his sister’s car and a mystery to solve. There is nothing waiting for him in the town he and Laura had called home, for that short while. All he has left now is this.

 

***

 

Laura’s list of addresses are of houses, some nicer than others. Derek spends a lazy day watching them, but these people do not have homes lined in mountain ash. They do not have the constantly roving gaze of hunters or the wary look of predators. These people are mundane. These people are human.

He spends the next day hunched over a table in the back of the library, trying to put names to addresses and faces to names and maybe, just maybe, figuring out what the fuck happened to his sister.

Really, it all feels a bit cliché when Derek finds a slip of paper in his pocket, an address written on it in Laura’s messy scrawl. But, Derek supposes, they’re clichés for a reason.

 

***

 

Derek does not go that night. It’s dark and he only has his sister’s Glock. He refuses to die before she can be avenged.

 

***

 

He’s eating barely cooked ramen the next day when the police car arrives.

“This is county property,” says the officer, visibly uncomfortable. A police dog barks once from the back of his car. “I’m going to have to ask you to vacate the premises.”

“This is Hale property,” he tells the officer. “This is my house.”

The officer frowns, more obviously displeased at the way his day is going than Derek’s obstinance. “C’mon, kid, it’s the burnt-out husk of a house. It doesn’t even count.”

Which of course is bullshit, because of course it counts. This is the only home Derek has now, and he’s not leaving. It is tied to him beyond words. It was paid for with the blood of those he loves, by his own foolish mistakes. “I’m not leaving.” Derek says, putting it simply.

“Fine,” the officer sighs, startling a bit when the dog in his car barks again. “I’m going to have to call my superiors then.”

“Fine,” Derek agrees and smiles tightly, a challenge. He squares his shoulders and waits.

 

***

 

“You know,” the Sheriff says when he arrives, “I’m getting really sick of this place.”

When Derek was younger, Sheriff Stilinski was Officer Stilinski and Officer Stilinski was his father’s friend. They used to go out drinking on the occasional weekend or after a long day at the office, and once a year Derek and Laura were herded to a house closer to town for a barbeque at the Stilinskis’.

He looks mostly the same, except for the shiny sheriff’s badge on his chest. Except that now the Sheriff’s face is lined with something like grief and if Derek were a better person he’d spare a minute to wonder if this is just as hard on the Sheriff as it is on him—standing where so many ;eople that he had loved had died, cruelly and without reason—but Derek is not that person.

“I didn’t ask you to come,” he tells the Sheriff, and Derek’s mother would have grounded him if he’d ever spoken like that to one of her friends when she was alive.

The Sheriff sighs, but he doesn’t sound like the other officer—resigned to the day not going according to plan—rather he sounds like a man who knows how to pick his battles. “Listen, son, you can’t stay here, and it’s not about who owns this property. This place doesn’t even have a _roof_.” The Sheriff pauses here, lets that sink in. “I liked your folks too well to let you sleep outdoors this time of year. You can stay with me, we have more than enough room.”

“It’s fine,” Derek tells him, because it is. Besides, the last thing he needs is to get the Sheriff involved in whatever Laura was involved in. The last thing he needs is to be in the house of the fucking _sheriff_ when Derek is very likely going to end up killing someone. “I won’t be in town long.”

“It’s not an inconvenience,” the Sheriff assures him, and then when Derek stays silent, “Look, it’s either that or I get the town to demolish the house and I arrest you. Again.” The Sheriff's shoulders sag at that. “Please don’t make me arrest you again.”

The idea of his home being destroyed makes Derek’s stomach roil. The Sheriff needn’t worry. Derek would do anything to protect this house. “If I come with you, the house can stay.” He means it as a question, clarification, but it comes out a demand. Not that it matters. Derek is ready to fight for it anyways.

A small smile finds its way onto the Sheriff’s face. “Yes,” he agrees. “Absolutely.”

 

***

 

Derek trusts the Sheriff—that his house will remain untouched—but trust only goes so far. There are secrets in these walls still. Derek does his best to hide his guns, his wolfsbane, Laura’s watch. There are tunnels beneath the house, a necessity of the lifestyle, but Derek can’t get to them with the Sheriff waiting just outside. He throws the essentials into a duffel bag and makes plans to return. There’s still work to be done.

 

***

 

There’s a blue jeep in the driveway of the Sheriff’s house, old but obviously well loved, and for a moment Derek feels like he’s going to be sick. Feels like this has all been some sort of horrible prank and that Laura is going to be inside, burning grilled cheese and asking Derek what took him so damn long. But Laura is dead, he buried her, and besides, she had her jeep back before Derek fucked everything up.

“It’s just the two of us now,” says the Sheriff, pulling into the driveway. He says it like it’s a secret, like it’s something not to be talked about, and Derek can respect that. He doesn’t have to ask who’s missing from the Stilinski family of three—the beat-up station wagon is nowhere  to be found, which Mrs. Stilinski always said she’s drive until the day she died.

 

***

 

“You remember Stiles,” says the Sheriff, sounding like it would be impossible to forget.

But Derek doesn’t remember Stiles. He remembers a boy named Aloysius with too much energy and a boa named Bruce that he used to let Derek feed, like it was the greatest thing in the whole wide world. Stiles is older. Stiles wanders the woods and gets Derek arrested. He shares Aloysius’s upturned nose, his wide brown eyes, but, Derek thinks, there is a darkness there that wasn't before. There is something settled into Stiles’s bones that Aloysius at eleven could have never dreamed. Derek suffers a moment of dissonance, reconciling the two.

“How could I forget,” he says at last. Derek and Aloysius were not friends. He doesn’t know what that makes him and Stiles.

Stiles smiles, and Derek doesn’t have to know him to know that it is forced. “Hey, man, long time no see.”

“I hate to be that guy, but I’m still on duty.” The Sheriff pats them both on the back. “Stiles, help Derek get settled, would you?”

He leaves before Stiles can answer and there is nothing but awkward silence in his wake.

 

***

 

Stiles says, “So I guess you’re in the guest room,” and, “I hope you’re cool with spaghetti and meatballs, because that’s what’s for dinner,” and, “Do I need to do a whole big tour or do you remember?”

Derek remembers a lot of things. He remembers hating coming over here. He remembers his mom saying, _be kind, sweetheart, he’s only excited_ , before pushing Derek over to where Aloysius— _Stiles_ —was, forcing them to hang out for the night. He remembers deviled eggs and the sound of laughter and thinking that he was too old for the kiddie table, but really, he had been so young.

“I’ll be fine,” Derek says, which isn’t really an answer for all that it is the truth. “Just point me to my room.”

“Man,” Stiles says, manhandling Derek’s bag from his hands before leading him upstairs, “was that a question or a statement? Did no one ever teach you about inflection?”

“You’re awfully cavalier,” Derek tells him, “considering you got me arrested.”

Derek has to give Stiles some credit, he only stumbles a little. “Well, how the hell was I supposed to know. I was just doing my civic duty,” and then, “Please don’t make it a thing. It doesn’t have to be a thing, right?”

Derek wrestles his bag from Stiles grip and says, mostly because he can, “We’ll see.”

 

***

 

Dinner is spaghetti and meatballs, like promised, but it is silence too. They were never friends, Derek and Stiles. They were just two kids who knew each other; two kids who were forced to interact. Stiles was so young back then and Derek had felt so old.

He wants to ask now, _when did you figure out Aloysius was a terrible name?_ and _when did she pass?_ , but Derek has never been the person to pry and too much has passed between them. Maybe if Derek had stayed they would have been friends, but that is a possibility for another lifetime. That is a possibility for a different Derek.

“Dad gets off shift around eleven,” Stiles tells him, clearing his place setting with a clatter. “I have homework to do.”

Derek had thought sleeping in the husk of his childhood house, his sister dead and buried in the back yard, had been difficult. But that house is only a shell. He does not look at those walls and remember lazy Sunday’s spent in the kitchen with his mother, or Friday’s in the woods, working on his aim with his father.

Here, though, Derek has memories of here. Real and tangible and _fresh_. His mother at the kitchen sink. His father at the barbeque. Mr. Stilinski telling him and Laura and Stiles stories. They are not happy memories, not really, but they are good and real and true. They are proof that Derek had a life here. That the fire took away more than just his family that day.

He puts his dishes in the sink and goes to bed. At least then he’ll stop remembering, just for a little bit.

 

***

 

(“Derek fucking Hale is in my house right now,” he hears, drifting by Stiles’s door on his way to bed. “Dude, I don’t even know. I’m just hoping he gets over the whole thing where we got him arrested.” There’s a pause, Stiles obviously listening, and then there is a laugh, bright and sharp. “You have no idea.”

Derek moves on, pretends he didn’t hear a thing.)

 

***

 

He goes back to his house in the morning.

“You’re going to miss pancakes,” Stiles informs him, cracking eggs into a bowl as Derek tries to sneak out. The Sheriff sits at the table in sweatpants and a t-shirt reading the paper.

“I’m not hungry,” Derek tells them, shrugs on his jacket like it can protect him.

The Sheriff raises an eyebrow but doesn’t otherwise comment. “See you later then.”

Derek wishes he didn’t feel like he was running from something. Then again, Derek hasn’t really felt any other way for a while now.

 

***

 

The tunnels under the Hale House are the only thing to have survived the fire. They are dark and they are damp, but they are hidden. It’s where his family has always kept their secrets.

Derek moves Laura’s things, moves the wolfsbane and the guns and bullets and bows and arrows. He will need them, he suspects, but he can’t bring them with him. Not to the Sheriff’s. They’ll be safe in the tunnels.

 

***

 

Laura’s body is no longer in the ground, instead it sits in some cooler in the county morgue like so much meat, but before he leaves, Derek still sits by her grave. He sits by the gaping hole in the ground, still waiting for its penance to be paid.

“I’m going to figure this out, Laura,” he tells the space her body should be. “I’m going to set things right.” Wind whips through the trees and snow tries to fall. Derek thinks it’s the world’s way of saying _at last_.

 

***

 

He goes to the address he found on the scrap of paper in Laura’s jacket. It’s across town in one of the newer developments that had started to spring up when Derek was in high school. There are no cars in the driveway. Church, Derek figures, it is Sunday after all. He’ll have to come back later.

He starts the car, ready to leave, when the other boy from the woods, the one with the inhaler, comes by on a bike and parks it by the front door. A girl with a shining smile and a cascade of dark hair greets him at the door before he can even ring the doorbell. Not church, then. Derek wonders why Laura was interested in these people. Wonders why she even came back here in the first place.

The teenagers start to get handsy and Derek pulls away from the curb. He’ll try again tomorrow.

 

***

 

“Dude, Scott, they found another body!” comes the excited cry as Derek opens the Stilinski’s front door. Stiles is there, eyes bright, bouncing on his heels, body thrumming with an energy Derek in his whole life has never understood.

Derek can see the moment that Stiles shifts, that Stiles shuts himself up and shuts himself away because those words were not for him. And Derek can feel something shift inside of him too, feels dread like a stone in the pit of his stomach.

“Where?” he asks. “What happened?”

Stiles’s mouth gapes for a moment, fishing for words, sorting out whatever lie he’s going to tell. “It’s probably just a mountain lion, man,” he says at last. “Nothing to get excited over.”

_Except where you were excited over it_ , Derek wants to point out, but there are cops already at the crime scene trampling over all the clues that are only important if you know how to look for them. “Where is it?” Derek grits out again, hunches his shoulders and takes a step forward—he’s never been above intimidation.

Something in Stiles’s posture gives even though he never actually breaks eye contact, never really backs down. “Fine, dude, fine. But if and when my dad catches you, this had _nothing_ to do with me. _Comprende_?” There is something there in his voice, underneath the glibness of youth, that is dark. That is fierce.

_Yeah, I_ comprende _just fine, thanks_ , Derek wants to tell him. He says, “Just tell me,” instead.

To his surprise, Stiles does.

 

***

 

There shouldn’t _be_ another body in the woods. Laura was supposed to be a one off. Laura was a hunter. Laura was from Beacon Hills, knew the things that went bump in the night, had enemies and secrets and wolfsbane infused mace.

This man, though, is middle aged. This man is old and weak and flabby. This man was taken down like prey, ankles hobbled and throat slashed. He never even stood a chance.

Derek can’t get close, not without catching the Sheriff’s attention, but he can get close enough to hear what he needs to, and he knows, deep in his bones, that a mountain lion did not do this.

 

***

 

(Derek is not the only one here who shouldn’t be. Stiles is less conspicuous than he thinks he is.)

 

***

 

The thing is, there shouldn’t _be_ any werewolves in Beacon Hills. Hunters had died, slaughtered like so many sheep—it would be suicide for a wolf to stay. No werewolf would risk vengeance from those hunters who did not adhere to the code. To risk vengeance from those who do.

Beacon Hills is still Argent land as much as it is a no-man’s-land, as much as it is Derek’s land. But the Argent’s know better than that, for the most part. The Argent’s behave themselves, as much as any wolves do.

Derek worries that this is the work of an Omega, savage and alone. Derek worries that the Argent’s have gone feral.

He doesn’t let himself think about Kate.

 

***

 

Life is all about the choices you make, and Derek has always chosen wrong. _You’ve got to think with your head as well as your heart, kiddo_ , his dad used to say, and Derek had scoffed because he was fifteen and what he had been thinking with was his dick. Derek chose lust over family. Chose to keep secrets because they soothed his guilt. Chose to keep Laura out because he didn’t know that was all the time they’d have together.

Derek’s choosing now to set things right, now. He is going to try to choose right, and he knows that there is more than one way to skin a cat. That there is more than one way to catch a wolf. He goes back to the house on the hill where his happiness once lived and he gets what he needs.

 

***

 

At night he heads back to the Stilinski’s because he doesn’t have another choice. Besides, he can’t refuse the Sheriff’s hospitality now; if his mother were alive she’d kill him.

Derek had thought that the Sheriff’s house would be loud. It had been, before, but Derek doesn’t really trust his memories. He thought that the silence from the other night, the way Stiles scraped his plate like it was an accusation was because of him. Because Stiles was smart enough to know that Derek coming back to Beacon Hills meant that he was going to bring another family to its knees. But when he gets back that night, the easy silence of the morning has been replaced by the easy silence of evening, and Derek wonders if the silence isn’t so much _easy_ as it is _convenient_.

The Sheriff’s in the dining room, shoulders slumped, hunched over a pile of papers. Stiles is in the kitchen, shifting his weight from foot to foot, eyes flicking to his father in the other room.

“I hope you like Chinese, dude,” he says like Derek had asked. He looks quickly at Derek, the clock, his father.

Derek shrugs—there are wolfsbane bullets and a leather-bound journal written in Latin in the bag at his side, weighing down on him. He does not belong here. “Chinese is fine.”

Stiles taps his fingers on the table, an idle rhythm, and looks back to the dining room. “Awesome,” he says, and Derek knows that he’s been dismissed, that Stiles has moved on to the mystery of his father in the dining room. “Dinner is whenever it gets here, then.”

Derek nods, leaves without saying a word. He thinks he hears, “Jesus, did no one ever teach you manners?” from the kitchen and Derek smiles despite himself.

 

***

 

The Sheriff has two fingers of whiskey at dinner. Then the Sheriff has loose lips and apparently crime solving is how the Stilinskis bond. Silence is broken by easy conversation of the macabre and a fight over the merits of tofu versus pork lo mein.

Garrison Myers, is still alive, barely. Garrison Myers, says the Sheriff, was a bus driver. But Derek knows better. Garrison Meyers, he was going to meet with Laura on Tuesday. Garrison Meyers knew his sister and he had secrets and Derek thinks that he needs to make his way through Laura’s list before they wind up dead too.

 

***

 

He starts with the last address, thinks that it was in a separate list for a reason. Derek knows that there’s no such thing as coincidence.

A woman leaves in the morning, tall with dangerously short hair and dangerously high heels. Derek glimpses boxes in garage, stacked neatly. Through the windows, he can see the walls are bare. Whoever these people are, they’re new. Derek doesn’t really trust new things.

_Just moved_ , Derek thinks and wishes he knew anyone he could ask for the town gossip. But Derek didn’t really have a lot of friends growing up, not like Laura, and, besides it’s been six years. He doesn’t know where they are now. He doesn’t even remember all their names. Whatever. Derek has made due with less. He’ll figure it out, he always does. Derek just hopes that this time he’s not too late.

 

***

 

There is only so long Derek can sit on a suburban street in a black Camaro. Besides, no one leaves after the woman and no one comes and it’s lunchtime on a weekday, Derek doesn’t really know what he was expecting.

He drifts through town, drives the Camaro slow and lets the engine purr. There’s the corner behind the high school where all the kids still go to smoke. There’s a second Starbuck’s now and a Best Buy and that old bookstore where his Aunt Clara used to take him has closed down.

Eventually he winds up at the mall, marvels that it’s somehow pretty much the same yet entirely different, and that he never realized, growing up here, how strange it was that there wasn’t a proper food court. There still isn’t, but there’s a Cold Stone and an Auntie Anne’s tucked close together with a Chinese place down the way, and that seems good enough.

The mall is mostly empty now, just twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings with the day off doing some shopping with a handful of kids playing hooky thrown in. Derek’s not that old, barely into his twenties, but he thinks it’s probably normal that he’s wondering how he got so old—how he went from the kid cutting school to the guy with nothing else to do but hang out at the mall. And it’s weird to think that anything in his life is normal when he still has the taste of ash in his mouth.

In the end, he picks up some Henleys and boxer-briefs in bulk at Macy’s. He’s at the mall, he might as well.

 

***

 

Stiles is back from school. From the guest room, Derek can hear him rumbling around the kitchen downstairs, banging cupboard doors and talking to someone named Scott. For the first time in Derek’s life, the gun in his hand feels foreign.

There are pictures up in the guest room, even though there aren’t really any family photos in the rest of the house. There are pictures of Stiles when he was younger, when he was still Aloysius, smiling with his parents, well loved and unafraid. The only photos of Mrs. Stilinski are here in this room, and Derek can’t really understand that. All of his family photos burned in the fire. There are more recent pictures of Derek and Laura on Facebook, but Derek doesn’t have anything but his memories to remember the exact curve of his mother’s smile, the exact shade of his father’s eyes. Derek understands pain and he understands loss but he doesn’t understand this: loving someone and hiding them, their face too hard to bear but too loved to get rid of all traces completely.

At first their smiles, happy and naive, had felt like accusations, but Derek had grit his teeth and gotten on with it, cleaning his gun and checking supplies. But now, with Stiles laugh floating up the stairs, Derek has to put the gun away. Has to sit down and pause and wonder how this is his life. His father had always said, _wolves hunt in a pack for a reason, and it’s not because they’re weak alone_. There was not a day anyone one of them went into the woods by themselves.

But Derek is alone now. And Derek is back in Beacon Hills when he’d sworn he’d never return. Derek is drowning in childhood memories and there are two teenagers downstairs not that much older than Derek was when he lost everything.

Exercise has always cleared Derek’s head. He does pushups until his body aches.

 

***

 

“Her family is scary,” comes a voice Derek hasn’t heard since that day in the woods, floating up the steps. “Like survivalist Bear Grylls meets _Godfather_ scary.”

“I told you,” Stiles laughs, “werewolves,” and Derek’s blood runs cold.

“I’m serious, Stiles,” his friend protests. “Mr. Argent, like, offered me a beer and then told me some weird story about a feral dog he once had to put down.”

It takes all of Derek’s self-control not to react.

 

***

 

He had never loved Kate, not really. She was older and she was taboo and Derek did not yet understand _consequence_. Did not understand that werewolves are still people, and people lie. But still, he gave so much to her. Gave her his youth and his virginity and, in the end, his family as well. Handed over their secrets on a silver platter because he’d confused _lust_ with _trust_ and it wasn’t until later that he realized neither of those things meant the same thing as _love_.

Derek knows that _Argent_ doesn’t automatically mean _Kate_. Their pack is large and sprawling, and Kate was devious but she was not a fool. But the Argents have motive and the Argents have means and Derek has never trusted wolves in the first place.

 

***

 

Scott stays for dinner. He spends the entire time pretending he isn’t staring at Derek, his eyes wide, jaw slack. Stiles elbows him in the ribs a couple of times before he gives up and asks him a question about a girl named Allison, an obvious distraction tactic that Scott falls for with a soft sigh.

Dinner is pizza, delivered, and a salad which the Sheriff eats after Stiles pointedly stares at him. It’s painfully domestic and Derek feels like he’s going to be sick. The Argents are out there. The Argents probably killed his sister and have now gone feral. But Derek knows that he can’t go after them alone. That there’s nothing to do now but sit and eat and wait.

It’s not revenge if Derek winds up dead first.

 

***

 

“What’s your issue?” Stiles asks when Scott has gone home and the Sheriff has headed to the station for what promises to be a long night of paperwork.

Derek doesn’t know what the hell Stiles is talking about. He’s standing in the kitchen loading the dishwasher because his mother taught him how to be a polite houseguest and Derek doesn’t really know what to do with himself otherwise. He needs to find the Argents. He needs to get into contact with hunters, people his parents once knew and Derek and Laura left behind, like everything else in their lives here. But it’s dark out and there are werewolves here, gone feral without the guidance of hunters, and Derek is angry but he is not reckless.

He doesn’t know what the hell Stiles’s problem is though. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You were looking at Scott like he ran over your dog or something,” Stiles says. “What the hell?”

Derek shrugs. “It’s nothing.” He really doesn’t need Stiles getting involved. Scott’s fringe involvement with Allison is problematic enough.

“Yeah, well, it didn’t look like nothing. You need to chill, dude. Scott’s like the human equivalent of a puppy.”

“Somehow,” Derek replies, despite himself, “I highly doubt that.” Human equivalents of puppies do not date werewolf girls. Derek is sure of this.

Stiles rolls his eyes, unimpressed. “Whatever, dude. Just, you know,” Stiles sweeps his hands around, wide and kinetic, like he’s trying to convey something Derek could never understand, “ _chill_.”

“I am chill.” Derek grits out. Very chill. So chill that he is not out killing the wolves who killed his sister.

Stiles doesn’t even answer. Just laughs his way out of the kitchen.

 

***

 

Derek is a hunter, born and bred, but he and Laura never kept fighting the good fight once they left Beacon Hills. They were young and they were alone and hunting is not a sport for kids. Instead, they helped where they could, kept in contact with the hunters they met as they drifted in and out of towns, and always got help when they stumbled upon a feral omega.

For all he was raised in Beacon Hills, he’s not actually that familiar with the nearby hunters. He remembers them vaguely from his childhood and has an incomplete list of names and numbers salvaged from the fire.

They’re all polite to Derek on the phone. All say _we’re sorry for your loss_ and _sorry about your sister_. But they also all say, _we haven’t heard anything about the Argents; call us if you get anything solid_.

No one offers to come right away. No one offers to come at all. Derek, it seems, is all alone.

 

***

 

“Nice ride.” Chris Argent says, and Derek never had a bone to pick with him, per se, but Chris’s voice still makes Derek’s hair stand on end. “Black cars, though, very hard to keep clean.”

There’s an SUV behind Derek with two men he doesn’t recognize. But that look on their faces, the smug belief that being an animal makes you better than a flesh and blood human, Derek’s familiar with that. He curses at himself for letting down his guard enough to be trapped like this.

“I would definitely suggest a little more maintenance,” Chris goes on, actually beginning to clean Derek’s fucking windshield like he’s not threatening an almost stranger on a weeknight. “If you have something this nice, you want to take care of it, right?” he asks, pausing to underscore his point, and then, “Personally, I’m very protective of the things I love. That’s something I learned from my family. You don’t have much of that these days,” he shakes the squeegee with a satisfied flick, and Derek doesn’t think he’s hated anyone’s arrogance more, “do you?”

There’s a look on his face like he’s just _so fucking pleased_ with himself and it takes everything Derek has not to act out. But there are wolves at his back and Derek knows, _Derek knows_ , that dogs can smell fear. Knows that Chris is a lot of bark and it was always Kate who had the bite. Derek knows that you never provoke a wolf pack, especially not without a plan and backup. So instead he says nothing, doesn’t take the easy mark.

Chris’s expression turns smug. “There we go. You can actually look through your windshield now. See how that makes everything so much clearer.”

Derek wants to say _I’m not the monster here, you are_ , but he can’t give the man the satisfaction. Not when he just threatened Derek with car maintenance. “You forgot to check the oil,” Derek says instead, just to be an ass.

There’s a smile on Chris’s face when he turns back to face Derek, like he’s just won. “Check the man’s oil,” he tells his men. The shattering of glass is like a knife to Derek’s gut, and he thinks that Kate is no longer the only Argent he has a problem with.

“Drive safely,” Chris tells him, the wolves piling back into their cars to drive away, satisfied for now. Happy in their belief that Derek is just a boy. Well, Kate was just a girl, and look what she did.

_You don’t have much of that these days, do you?_ , Chris had asked and Derek wants to yell into the night, _don’t worry; soon you won’t have much of one either_.

 

***

 

He breaks into Garrison Myers hospital room because he’s feeling reckless. Like most of Derek’s plans, it fails spectacularly. It ends in more questions than answers and another dead body.

Derek thanks his lucky stars that he’s finally old enough to legally drink his problems away.

 

***

 

“Classy,” Stiles says in the morning, clearly undeterred by Derek’s glower and out of control bedhead. “You have fun last night?”

“A blast,” Derek answers, hoping the sarcasm in his voice will be enough to get Stiles to leave him the hell alone. Stiles, it seems, doesn’t give a fuck as he cheerfully bangs all the cupboard doors shut and whistles off-key. Derek wishes that the time he woke up after drinking weren’t inversely related to how big his hangover is, because he’d woken up at seven and instantly wished for sweet death. Or, at least some coffee.

Stiles splashes some milk, haphazard, into his cereal. “I’d make you coffee, but all we have is decaf and my dad forbid me from using the coffee maker even though I totally didn’t break it that time. I swear, hand on heart, that thing broke all by itself.”

It is too early to have to deal with this much talking, but Derek manfully resists resting his head on the table. “Do you at least have bacon?”

“Yes. Well, turkey bacon,” Stiles answers through a mouthful of cereal. “But you’re gonna have to cook it by yourself. I have to get to school.”

Derek is hungover and sleep deprived but he’s not deficient. He can fucking cook _bacon_. “I think I’ll be fine.”

Derek worries, briefly, that Stiles doesn’t understand sarcasm, because his face does this thing where it’s like he’s thinking that Derek has never even been in a kitchen before. Stiles opens his mouth like he’s going to offer to cook Derek breakfast or something equally ridiculous, but then they hear the sound of the Sheriff pulling into the driveway and Stiles is cursing, “Late, oh man, I am going to be so fricken late,” as he drops his bowl into the sink and grabs his backpack from the kitchen table. “Later, dude.”

The Sheriff, at least, can make coffee.

 

***

 

Unlike his son, the Sheriff understands silence. Or, at least, he appreciates it enough to let it bloom. Doesn’t clutter it with words, just the soft sigh of a man who just worked a twelve-hour shift and knows his work is not yet done. The Sheriff takes off his badge, locks his gun away, and it’s like the weight of the world has been lifted off his shoulders and the weight of the universe has been put on instead. Even the sound of his spoon against the ceramic of his mug sounds tired.

Derek pushes some bacon around in a pan and tries to pretend he’s not _that_ hangover. The Sheriff knew Derek when _Space Jam_ was his favorite movie, after all.

“You cook?” The Sheriff asks, incredulous.

“It’s bacon.” Derek does not understand these people. Then again, they’ve ordered take-out for three of the past four nights. Derek sincerely hopes that they’re just projecting.

In any case, the Sheriff lets it drop, pours them both coffee made from his secret caffeinated stash, sits at the table and flips through the paper, and lets Derek shove a plate of bacon and eggs in front of him. Bacon, not beer, Derek decides, is proof that God loves man and wants him to be happy.

“Rough night last night?” the Sheriff asks, barely glances up from the paper in his hands, which is probably supposed to take as just general, parental concern. However, Derek’s been interrogated by the man. He’s not good at people but he understands this.

He shrugs. “Just a late night.”

“So your window got smashed in all by itself?” The Sheriff actually puts the paper down, looks Derek in the eye, gaze level, without judgment. There is a moment where Derek’s heart aches. Where he thinks his father would say the same thing while Laura laughed. Where he thinks his mother would smack him up the side of the head before ruffling his hair affectionately and saying _really, Derek, you think we’re buying that?_

“Must have,” Derek agrees.

The Sheriff pauses, considering. “If anyone’s causing you grief, you can tell me.” He holds Derek’s gaze for a moment longer before turning back to the paper. “There’s a mechanic over on Main Street. Tony B’s closed down last year.”

And that, it seems, is that.

 

***

 

The mechanic is some guy who was a few years above Derek in high school, not that he remembers Derek at all, but Derek has a good memory for assholes. Also, for guys that Laura brought home just to terrorize their parents with. He overcharges and takes his sweet time, but he does good enough work that Derek only casually considers keying the guy’s car.

On the way home, he drives by the high school. Stiles is sitting out front with Scott and the girl that must be Allison. They’re laughing and leaning on one another and Derek never really had that, even before the fire. He’s always been quiet. Never been that great with people.

There is a moment when Allison looks over and Derek’s heart skips a beat. Her eyes don’t glow gold, but Derek knows when he’s caught the attention of a wolf. He can see the uncertainty pass through her dark brown eyes that are nothing like Kate’s, but Derek knows too well that appearances can be deceiving.

He drives away before anyone else can catch sight of him.

 

***

 

“No, seriously,” Stiles says when he comes home, barging into Derek’s room like the door wasn’t closed. “What the hell is going on with you?”

There’s really no use in pretending that Derek isn’t holding a wooden box filled with bullets, so Derek chooses to just growl, “Get out.” Stiles seriously does not need to get involved in this.

Stiles apparently also thinks just talking over someone is a good way to get what you want. He closes the door and says, “Dude, you’ve been creeping around town and _my school_ and you completely freaked out Allison today and _oh my god are those bullets_?”

Looks like Derek could have denied it then. “You don’t want to know,” Derek tells him, because Stiles really doesn’t.

“You have _a box of bullets_ in the _guestroom_ of my _house_ ,” Stiles doesn’t quite yell, but it’s a near thing. “My dad is the sheriff. You know that right?”

Derek grimaces. He does, in fact, know that. “This has nothing to do with you,” Derek tries instead.

Stiles, it seems, finds this to be funny. “Do I need to remind you about the whole _in my house_ thing? Or go over the bit where you’re creeping on my friends? At my school?”

“No,” Derek glowers. This was all much easier when Derek was thirteen and all he had to say was, _hey, Aloysius, weren’t you going to let me feed Bruce?_ when Stiles started asking uncomfortable questions. He sighs, closes the box, and doesn’t miss the way Stiles’s eyes skim _aconit napél bleu nordique_ written on the lid. “It’s about Laura. Can we leave it at that?”

There is something calculating in Stiles’s wide brown eyes. Derek has known Stiles since he was a little kid explaining earnestly why he named his snake after both Bruce Banner and Bruce Wayne. Stiles is energetic and has ADHD and likes to get guys arrested by accident, but Derek didn’t think that, underneath it all, lay this. Didn’t think that the little boy with limbs too long would grow up with steel in his bones and a dogged determination in his soul.

Something in Stiles’s posture softens. “You know they’re going to find them, right? Whoever did this. My dad is going to find them.”

Derek wishes he still had that kind of faith. “No, Stiles,” he tells him. “He’s really not.”

 

***

 

Dinner is veggie burgers and curly fries and awkward silence, so, really, it’s not all that different from every other dinner Derek has had here. He wonders, briefly, as Stiles shoves a mountain of fries into his mouth with the enthusiasm only sixteen-year-olds can muster, what the fuck he’s still doing here.

The answers simple, really: where else does Derek have to be?

 

***

 

He lies low for a couple of days. Lets Chris Argent think he’s won. Lets Stiles think everything’s okay. Lets himself think that maybe he could have a normal life, if he even knew what that was.

Derek does his laundry in the Stilinski’s cobweb-filled basement and then he goes out and buys a couple more pairs of jeans after a passing comment from the Sheriff. And then he goes grocery shopping because the Sheriff asks, “What are you in the mood for tonight? Italian or Indian?” and Derek thinks if he eats one more delivered meal, his arteries are going to harden completely.

 

***

 

Derek makes chicken cacciatore because he fucking can and he makes mashed cauliflower because it’s fucking delicious.

“Um,” Stiles says, mouth hanging open, “what are you doing?” He’s carrying a lacrosse stick in one hand and a pair of cleats in the other, but the uniform haphazardly poking out of his backpack looks clean.

It should be obvious what he’s doing, Derek thinks. He’s wearing a fucking apron for Christ’s sake and some very nice cauliflower is about to meet a grizzly end. “I’m preventing heart disease,” Derek explains. It doesn’t matter how many veggie burgers Stiles shoves down this father’s throat, they’re still dripping in trans-fat and empty calories.

Stiles seems to contemplate this, something quiet and assessing in his gaze, and Derek has been seeing more of that lately. Derek has started to realize that Stiles is more than just a teenager with ADD. “What, you don’t like my cooking?” Stiles asks at last, grin on his face.

Derek actually snorts. “Being on a first name basis of the guy who makes your shrimp pad thai isn’t cooking.”

“Eh, some say _to-may-to_ , some _to-mah-to_ ,” Stiles replies, opening the fridge and taking out the milk. “But whatever makes you happy, Bobby Flay.”

Stiles leaves at that, lacrosse gear abandoned on the kitchen floor, taking a swig of milk straight from the carton. Inside, everything Derek knows about physical fitness recoils in terror. Peas, he decides. They are going to eat peas as well if it kills him.

 

***

 

(“You can stay as long as you like,” the Sheriff tells him sincerely, mouth full of chicken, “if you keep cooking like this.”)

 

***

 

There is a moment, in between the Sheriff’s quick smile and Stiles’s saying _if I do the dishes will you stop being such a fricken sourpuss, already?_ , that Derek thinks that this could be it. That he could be happy again. That he could rebuild himself a life and figure out who killed Laura and get revenge and everything would be okay.

Derek has learned, though, that he was not built for happiness.

 

***

 

Kate corners him in the dairy aisle.

“Hey there, beautiful,” she smiles at him, like she didn’t fucking burn his family to a crisp. “You don’t write; you don’t call. It’s like you don’t love me anymore.”

There’s orange juice and three cans of Chef Boyardee in her shopping basket and it is all just so fucking _mundane_ , except that Kate has never been mundane a day in her life and Derek can’t help but remember the way she would purr into his underage ear. The way that she clawed at his back and gave him false promises and the way she laughed and laughed and laughed when Derek had called, voice cracked from tears, and demanded _what the hell did you do?_

“Leave me alone, Kate,” Derek growls.

Kate just laughs and the sound makes Derek feel like he’s going to be sick. “Your sister said the same exact thing.”

He’s not really conscious of reaching out—trying to take back control when it feels like Kate has stripped it from him just by breathing—but the next thing he knows, Kate’s claws are in his arm, pressing through the leather, a dangerous pressure on his skin. She takes a step forward, lets herself into Derek’s space, and Derek feels like he can’t breathe.

“Now,” she coos, “that’s not very nice.” Kate’s eyes flash blue as she cups her hand around Derek’s neck, her claws pressing into his skin. “And in public too,” she tuts. She stays there for a moment, her body pressed against him, and Derek remembers thinking that she was a gift, that his parents were wrong and this wolf girl would be his salvation. Kate smiles, tips her head like she’s listening, and it’s all Derek can do to keep his heart beat steady. “There now,” Kate says at last, digging her claws into his flesh, “that’s better.”

Derek can feel blood welling at the back of his neck as Kate leaves, the sharp sting of pain from four distinct wounds, and he thinks it’s a small price to pay for letting his guard down. For letting Kate get away for so long.

The games are over now. Kate is a wild thing; it doesn't matter if Laura's blood is on her hands or not—Derek is going to put her down.

 

***

 

Stiles finds him, of course he does.

Derek’s shirt is flung across the toilet, blood staining the collar. He stands at the mirror angling his body, trying to see what damage has been done. There are gauze pads and a bottle of Bactine on the bathroom counter; the rest of the Stilinski medicine cabinet is strewn across the floor. Derek didn’t have the patience for maintaining order, not when he could still feel Kate’s breath, hot against his ear.

“Oh my G _od_ ,” Stiles says, and if Derek paused to think about it, he wouldn’t really blame him. “What happened?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Derek tells him. Stiles doesn’t need to become involved.

Stiles doesn’t look so sure about that, eyes flicking from Derek’s ruined shirt to the scratches on his neck, teenage disbelief turning into something else Derek can’t quite name. “Uh-huh, sure. Yeah, you’re just bleeding in my bathroom. And before that I found you fondling some antique bullets up in your room. Let’s not even mention the bit where you keep hanging out in the woods where people were recently murdered.”

Derek feels something dark inside of him rise up, terrified that Stiles is so close to the truth. That Stiles is going to try and stop him. “Laura was my _sister_ ,” he says, sounding dangerous to his own ears. He’s closer to Stiles now, not even conscious of moving.

“I’m not saying she wasn’t,” Stiles says, doesn’t take a step forward and doesn’t take a step back, just holds his ground against Derek. “I’m just trying to figure out what the hell you’re doing because it seems kind of like you don’t really know and kind of like you are deep into some _really bad_ shit.”

“It doesn’t involve you,” Derek tells him again. Hopes that this time Stiles will finally listen.

Stiles doesn’t look amused and he doesn’t look like he’s going to quit. “So you keep saying. Jesus Christ, Derek, how long have we known each other? I’m just trying to help, dude.” There’s no anger in his voice, just certainty. Derek doesn’t really know what to do with that.

“I’m trying to protect you,” Derek admits at last, after a long moment.

It doesn’t seem to help the situation at all. “From what?” asks Stiles.

“It’s not for you to know,” Derek tells him, shoving Stiles out of the room and shutting the door in his face.

Stiles doesn’t even yell. Doesn’t even fight back. Instead he says, “You’ll need someone eventually,” as Derek locks the door. “Everyone does.”

Derek listens to Stiles stomp back down the stairs. He says in the bathroom until the Sheriff comes home.

Stiles is oddly silent during dinner. Derek tries not to dwell on it.

 

***

 

There’s another murder. Kate could never help herself. She’s always liked taunting just as much as she liked violence.

“What I want to know is how the hell a mountain lion broke into a video store,” the Sheriff is demanding below. Derek stands on the roof of the store, Beacon Hills expanding around him into the night. Kate is out there somewhere, blood in her mouth and blood on her hands. The Argents have always had more sense than that. Always, at the very least, understood discretion. Something has changed.

Derek has never felt smaller than he does now.

 

***

 

When he gets back home, Stiles says, “Let’s talk werewolves.” He’s sitting on Derek’s bed looking not at all surprised to find Derek climbing in through the window at three in the morning.

“I told you to drop it,” Derek tells him, refuses to feel awkward about sneaking in. The Sheriff is still at the crime scene and Stiles is supposed to be sleeping. He has an English quiz in the morning.

“Dude, I’m pretty sure the last time we talked about werewolves was when I was seven and got freaked out by that Discovery Channel special, so you and Laura spent the day hiding around the house and howling at me.” Derek doesn’t remember this, but it does seem like something he and Laura would have done. “Not nice, by the way. I couldn’t sleep for a week,” Stiles adds, dopey grin on his face, before sobering.

Derek realizes, rather belatedly, that he’s been caught. “What do you want?”

“What do I want? _What do I want?_ ” Stiles parrots, hysteria lacing his voice. “How about a ‘why the hell are you asking about werewolves and why the hell are you lurking in my bedroom at three in the morning _’_? You know, since that’s what most people would say.”

“Uh-huh,” Derek agrees vaguely. He wants to sit down. He wants to strip out of his clothes and go to bed. At the very least he wants to close the damn window, cold air blowing in and tickling the back of his neck, but Derek feels exposed, like he’s on the defensive. Derek was raised to never turn his back to danger, not that Stiles is dangerous, but, Derek thinks, he’s certainly not harmless, either.

“So,” Stiles tries again after a beat, “let’s talk about werewolves.”

Derek grits his teeth and thinks that this is not going away on its own. “Okay,” he agrees, “let’s.”

 

***

 

Stiles, Derek knows, is not like other boys. He was never like other boys and Derek has never known what to do with him. As a kid Stiles was underfoot, over-eager, desperate for some kind of affection or recognition from Derek that he had been too stubborn to give. In his time away, Derek never sat down and wondered what happened to Aloysius, but if he did, he would have never expected this. Never expected that Aloysius would metamorphose into Stiles. That time and puberty and loss would sharpen his ever-wandering attention. He never thought that Stiles would become the kind of person who could spend an hour at dinner explaining to his father the finer points of [_Batman: Arkham City_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman:_Arkham_City)and then who could sit here with Derek and hear tales of wolves and believe without ever having to ask for proof.

“So what are you going to do, then?” Stiles asks.

“What?” Derek is confused and he has the sinking suspicion that he should stop expecting to understand how Stiles’s brain works.

“Well, there’s a killer werewolf out there,” Stiles explains slowly, as if he’s had the knowledge all along and Derek is the outsider. “And it clearly has an issue with people outside of the hunting werewolf profession, you know, given the two extra murders, and you said that your family dealt with this kind of crap. I mean, I’m new to this whole thing, but I’m thinking the psycho killer wolf might just kill again. Just saying.”

Derek gapes a bit, tries not to. He wonders what happened to turn little Aloysius into this. If Derek were a more emotionally intelligent person, he would wonder if Stiles would always have been like this, no matter what happened in Derek’s absence. But that is another Derek and he will never know another Stiles.

“You have to _do something_ ,” Stiles presses. “We can’t let it hurt anyone else. Derek, _my dad_ is out there.”

“I know, Stiles.” Derek has thought about it before, the risk to the Sheriff, and he knows it would kill him if anything happened the man. Derek tries not think about what it would do to Stiles. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t take on a wolf pack by myself and no other hunters will come.”

There is something settled about Stiles now, a stillness to him that Derek has never seen before in all of his years or forced friendship. “We’ll figure it out.” Stiles sounds older than Derek feels. “We have to.”

 

***

 

(It takes Derek until the next night, Stiles peeling potatoes and talking about some girl named Lydia, before he even thinks about what Stiles said. _We’ll figure it out_ , like they're in it together. And Derek would protest, he would—this is exactly what he’s been fighting against—but it feels nice to have this person Derek can call an ally. That he might be able to call a friend.)

 

***

 

“So how,” Stiles asks, stepping into Derek’s room like it’s where he belongs, “do we figure out who the psycho killer werewolf is, again?”

“You don’t have to help me,” Derek tells him, because as much as he’d like an ally in this, Stiles is still young. Stiles can still live his life without any werewolf bullshit or any of Derek’s mistakes.

“Do I need to go over again how _my dad_ is out there? Thinking he’s looking for some sort of mountain lion with a vendetta?”

Derek sighs. Stiles, it seems, is in it for the long haul. “There has to be a pattern,” he explains. “These aren’t random killings. We figure out the pattern, we can figure out what the wolf is going to do next.” He means _who she’s going to kill_ , but Derek figures that Stiles probably can work all that out for himself.

Stiles looks sort of incredulous. “How do you know it’s not random? Couldn’t it be going all Hulk Smash on anything that moves? Because, you know, crazy.”

“Sure,” Derek agrees, “if it somehow lost enough sense to wolf out over some late fees at the video store.”

“Point taken,” Stiles concedes. “So what do know so far?”

Derek reaches for Laura’s notes, stuffed in the front pocket of his duffle. “Not a lot.”

Stiles grins. “That’s what you have me for.”

 

***

 

_Not a lot_ turns out to be _Laura at least knew of these people and now they’re dead_. It would be better, of course, if they knew why Laura had connected them at all. Better if there weren’t five Meyers’ and seven Harris’s on the list, meaning that Laura was only working through a few things herself. But, it’s more than Derek had yesterday. At least it’s a start.

 

***

 

(“What are you guys working on?” the Sheriff asks at night, mouth full of pizza, an untouched salad at his elbow.

“Oh, you know, Derek’s helping me out with this history project,” Stiles says, the lie coming easily from his lips, and Derek is so desperately thankful for it that he doesn’t even stop to wonder the implications.)

 

***

 

In the morning, he finds a missed call on Laura’s cell phone. Derek hits play and only half listens, expects it to be their landlord or one of the guys from work asking where the hell she is. He wonders if, when this is all over, he can just pick a new place to live where no one knows him or his sister. Wonders if it will stop hurting so badly if he doesn’t have to call up everyone they know, even if they were never particularly close with them, and say _Laura’s dead_. If he doesn’t have to live with sympathy and the sad eyes of strangers and an apartment that used to feel something like home.

But as the message plays, Derek wonders who the fuck Adrian Harris his and why this asshole is leaving such a demanding, douchey message on his sister’s phone. He wonders why the hell they were meeting at all. He thinks he should have maybe been checking Laura’s cell a little more frequently, and wonders what other clues he’s missed along the way.

 

***

 

“We need to talk,” says the Sheriff, knocking twice on Derek’s open door as a courtesy, startling Derek into stillness.

He suddenly feels fourteen all over again and all he can think is _oh shit_. Of course that’s exactly when Derek remembers why the name _Adrian Harris_ sounds so familiar. _538 Rembalt Drive_ , Derek thinks. Small house, one car, uninteresting. It was the second address on Laura’s list but Derek hadn’t stayed there long.

Now though, with the Sheriff staring down on him, Derek realizes he’s made a mistake. It shouldn’t be a surprise—he’s never been a good judge of character.

 

***

 

There is a brief moment where Derek wonders if they’re going to go downstairs into the den like his parents always did for intensely uncomfortable Family Conversations. But the Sheriff talks a step forward, says, “Listen, son,” sounding like he’s steeling himself, here and now, for whatever it is he has to say. “The coroner’s ready to release Laura’s body. I checked with the cemetery, and we can have everything set up by the weekend.” The Sheriff’s voice is soft, but he’s left no room for feelings or protest or anything else Derek might embarrass himself with. “Is there anyone you want to call to be there?” The Sheriff does not ask if Derek wants to have a funeral for his sister. There is something in the Sheriff’s face that says he knows it’s important to honor the dead.

Derek doesn’t actually know what to say to that, opens his mouth to try and say _thank you_ but the words are stuck in his throat. He doesn’t think it’s enough and he doesn’t think that there’s really anything else to say. If he closes his eyes, he can hear Laura, clear as day, telling him _they’re called ‘feelings,’ dumbass, lots of people have them_. The Sheriff seems to understand anyways.

“I’ll get you the details,” he says as soon as it’s clear that Derek isn’t going to say anything. He leaves, doesn’t let the moment grow, and then Derek is alone, Laura’s cell phone still in his hands, and all Derek can think is that there’s not a single person in the world to call.

Harris, for now, can wait.

 

***

 

Derek never owned a suit. For his parents’ funeral (and his aunt’s and his uncle’s and his cousins’ and Derek wishes that they hadn’t come to visit, had stayed in San Francisco for that weekend, because then they’d still be alive) he wore the only pair of jeans he had and a black hoodie some grim-faced social worker had dropped off in a bag along with some other things clearly picked out from the Goodwill without care. At the time, he’d been too guilt ridden to feel self-conscious about it.

Now, though, Derek thinks that Laura would laugh herself silly if she saw Derek in a suit for any reason at all, so he picks up a black button down and calls it a day. It’s not like there’s going to be anyone there to judge.

 

***

 

Except of course there is, because Stiles is there and the Sheriff is there. They don’t talk about it, which suits Derek just fine, because there’s nothing really to say. His sister was ripped to shreds and all Derek has done about it is let himself be threatened by the Argents. His sister is dead and the only family Derek has left is the shell of an uncle. His sister was beautiful and brilliant and a pain in his ass, and Derek is the only one who is around to miss her.

If nothing else, it’s nice to be around people who cared for her in their own way.

 

***

 

A bouquet of flowers sits on the Stilinski’s front steps when they get back. Derek doesn’t have to read the card to know they’re from Kate.

 

***

 

There is nothing but silence in the wake of Laura’s funeral. Derek doesn’t know how to say _thank you_ without seeming insincere. Can’t open his mouth and say those two simple words because it doesn’t seem like enough. Derek has never been loquacious, always preferred silence to small talk, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t understand the power of words. He just finds that every time he opens his mouth, there is nothing there but the taste of ash, heavy on his tongue.

He thinks, though, that the Stilinskis understand. Thinks that there is something in the way that they refuse to meet his eyes that betrays understanding. He wonders, briefly, what happened to Mrs. Stilinski to break these men so completely.

 

***

 

There is a finality to funerals. There is a sense of permanence that does not come from death itself. For a while, Derek had felt something that was like peace when his sister’s torso was buried in the scorched land of his family home. But half of her was still in a morgue and they had dug her up anyways. Locked away her body like they could divine all her secrets from her liver and the bite marks spread across her skin like constellations, but the Hale’s have never traded in secrets that normal men could ever understand.

Now, though, now Laura is buried alongside their parents and grandparents. Derek is the only Hale left and the burden of their dynasty falls upon his shoulders alone, his uncle Peter nothing more than a symbol of the cruelty a wolf, unchecked, can inflict.

Derek does not know what brought Laura back to Beacon Hills, but he’s afraid that he might. He does not understand why Kate chose now to act out, why she has chosen her victims as she has, but Derek thinks he might be able to. Garrison Meyers knew his sister, and now he is dead. Adrian Harris is the only chance that Derek has. Really, he has no choice but to act.

 

***

 

Even before the fire, Derek has never been good at asking for help. He’s always preferred just cutting to the chase and could never understand why people always wanted to complicate things. It’s always been easier just to do things himself. To leave the assorted bullshit of other people’s lives alone. But now Derek needs help, and he doesn’t really know how to ask.

“What am I looking at?” Stiles asks when Derek stomps into his room and shoves a paper in front of him. Stiles has his history textbook pulled out, the pages almost entirely yellow with highlighter, but there’s a math problem sheet half filled out on top and a calculator in Stiles’s hand.

“Adrian Harris’s address,” Derek tells him. “Do you know him?”

“Adrian Harris?” Stiles repeats dumbly. “Like my chemistry teacher?” There is something high pitched and anxious in his voice, but Derek knows now that that’s just Stiles. “What the hell’s Harris got to do with any of this?”

“Laura went to talk to him. She went to Garrison Meyers too, and look how he ended up.”

Stiles grimaces, but when he says, “Looks like someone has a vendetta,” his tone is light.

Derek grimaces in return. “We find out why Laura was talking to them, we can figure out who’s next. We can put an end to this.”

Stiles spins his highlighter in his hands. “Sounds like a plan to me.”

 

***

 

“We’ll talk to him after school, yeah?” Stiles says in the morning. “Obviously I can’t interrogate my teacher at school, and I honestly don’t want to spend any more time with the dude than necessary. What a douche.”

Derek thinks about saying _you don’t have to come with me, then_ but says, “Don’t forget your math book again,” instead.

Stiles wouldn’t take the out, anyways.

 

***

 

The thing is, when Derek was fifteen he had sex with a girl he shouldn’t have and she burned his whole fucking family to a crisp. He was young and he was reckless and he was _dumb_. There is no real way Derek can make up for that, but he can revenge Laura and he can keep Stiles and the Sheriff safe.

Derek was not made for loneliness. He grew up with a big family that always touching Derek’s shit and asking him questions about his life. In another world, Derek would not be alone in this. He would not have only a sixteen-year-old boy for back up and he would have someone telling him what to do.

But Derek is old enough to learn from his mistakes and he is old enough to stop making the same mistake time and time again. Trusting other people, Derek knows, just gets them dead. Playing games with wolves ends in bloodshed. Sixteen-year-olds believe in what they’re doing, but they don’t always know what that is.

Adrian Harris is alive, right now, and he might not be for long. That’s all Derek really needs to know.

 

***

 

(Security at Beacon Hills High School is still as frighteningly lax now as it ever was. Derek is not a fool. He knows what his body can do for him. It shouldn’t take just a smile, but Derek’s not complaining.)

 

***

 

Adrian Harris is a tall man with black framed glasses and an inflated sense of self. Derek steps into the classroom and Harris asks, “Can I help you?” like it’s a burden. He doesn’t look up, just keeps grading papers, and Derek wonders how this man got tenured.

“I want to know why you were meeting with Laura Hale.” There is something grimly satisfying about how Harris’s head snaps to attention.

“I didn’t meet with her,” he counters, all bluff. “She stood me up.”

Derek takes a step forward, cracks his knuckles because he can. “She was _murdered_. And I think you know why.”

It’s satisfying, in a way, to see Harris pale. To see arrogance turn to fear. “She wanted to talk to me about the fire,” Harris swallows, looks away. “I don’t know how she figured it out.”

“My sister was very smart,” Derek tells him. Nothing in Harris’s posture gives, but Derek doesn’t think there wasn’t much in him to give anyways. “What did she figure out? _What do you know_?” And there it is, the million-dollar question: what does Harris know. What did Meyers and his sister and the video store clerk all know? What secret is so powerful that Kate would kill to keep it.

“If I tell you,” Harris risks a glance back at Derek, and you don’t have to be a wolf to recognize the clear look of prey, “she’ll kill me.”

Derek puts his hands on Harris’s desks, leans in, and tells him the truth:  “If you don’t tell me, _I’ll_ kill you.”

It seems that the only life Harris really cares about is his own. “There was a girl. I met her at a bar. We had a lot of drinks.” He pauses, considering, swallows again. “Do you have any idea what that’s like? To have someone actually interested in the topic of chemistry?” He asks, voice rising. There is fire in his eyes, the bravery of a cornered animal.

“I _don’t care_.” Derek growls. “What did you tell her?”

“It’s fascinating stuff,” Harris goes on, lost to his own words now. “How you could melt away the lock of a bank vault. How you could dissolve a body and get away with murder.” There is a pause, like he is hoping Derek will say it for him, but Derek has never been so kind. When Harris speaks again is sounds like his voice is being scraped out of him. “How you could start a fire and get away with arson.”

Derek doesn’t need him to go on. Derek knows how that story ends. “Who?” he asks. “Who did you tell?”

Harris just draws him a picture and Derek feels like he’s going to be sick.

 

***

 

Stiles is sitting on the hood of the Camaro when Derek makes it outside.

“You’re going to miss practice,” Derek tells him, trying to head Stiles off at the pass. He’s not really surprised when Stiles just bulldozes right over him.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Stiles opens his arms up wide, lacrosse stick in one hand, backpack slung over his shoulder. “We had a _plan_.”

It’s true, they did. Derek wants to say _you’ve done enough as it is_ but he knows Stiles will think that he’s coddling him. He wants to say _I want to keep you safe_ but Derek’s never saved anyone in all his years of trying.

“I talked to Harris,” Derek says instead.

“Well I figured that much out,” Stiles replies. “I didn’t think you were just lurking around the high school like the world’s biggest twenty-year-old creeper.”

Derek doesn’t really know what to say to that, so he says nothing. Stiles stares at him, eyebrows slowly rising, until he rolls his eyes and sighs, all teenage exasperation. “ _Well_? What did he say?”

“He didn’t say anything,” Derek says, handing out the slip of paper Harris gave him. “But he handed over our smoking gun.”

There is no way Stiles is going to lacrosse practice after that.

 

***

 

“So what you’re telling me,” Stiles asks for the eight hundredth time, “Is that Kate Argent is trying to kill everyone who helped her out with arson six years ago because she doesn’t want anyone to pin it on her?”

Derek can feel the starts of a headache coming on. “That’s about it,” he says. Again.

“Well that is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Stiles tells him sounding surprisingly incredulous for a person who took to werewolves like a duck to water. “There’s way more evidence against her now. And charges too, let’s not forget about that.” He chews on his lip a moment, before asking, “So what do we do now? Hand over the evidence to my dad and let the law take care of the serial killer who’s apparently living in town?”

“There are hunters for a reason, Stiles.” Derek couldn’t think of a worse solution if he tried, but, then again, Laura always told him imagination was never his strong suit.

Stiles sighs. “You know, I really liked that plan. No lying. No sneaking around. My dad gets to be the hero.”

“He’ll be dead if he tries to take Kate on his own,” Derek says without thinking. It makes something dark passes over Stiles face. There is something like regret churning in Derek’s stomach, and the shape of it is sharp and bright over the years-old regrets that fill his gullet. But for all Derek knows regret, knows the shape and taste of it, he has never been able to say, _I’m sorry_. “Hunters are there to take care of feral werewolves,” Derek says instead. “To keep people safe.”

“Uh-huh,” Stiles agrees, and Derek understands Stiles well enough, at this point, to understand that it’s false cheer, “but didn’t you say that no hunters want to deal with this town?” When Derek nods, Stiles asks, “So what do we do?”

They do what Derek was born to do. “We kill the wolf.”

 

***

 

(The Sheriff brings home takeout and the entire dinner is a standoff between him and Stiles and what exactly the doctors had said about the state of the Sheriff’s arteries. It’s petty and it’s domestic and Derek hopes that Stiles isn’t going to lose this just because neither one of them can figure out how to say _no_.)

 

***

 

Derek was born to hunt werewolves. To seek justice against those who believe that being an aberration makes them powerful. Makes them better than flesh and blood humans who build things with their hands and keep them safe with their lives. Derek was raised to live by a Code, which gave him power and made him humble and made sure that he, and every person like him, did not turn into something like the monsters they hunted.

But Derek was not born to lead. _Men think with their pride and women think with their hearts_ , his father had said, and Derek thinks that’s not quite right, but it’s not wrong either. Laura didn’t betray their secrets, and Laura didn’t let tragedy break her. Laura used to card her fingers through Derek’s hair at night, when they were still living out of shitty motels, and she never made fun of him when he cried.

Derek lives with regret settled into his bones, but he has never been one to wonder _what if_. There is no one to take charge but him, and so Derek will do the best he can. There is no other way.

 

***

 

The trick to killing werewolves is to make sure you don’t wind up dead yourself. The wolves Derek’s killed in the past had been Omegas, gone wild without an Alpha to draw a hard and fast line. They were always more beast than man, and Derek’s father always made the kill quick, made sure that he took down the wolf and not a person with human eyes.

The problem with Kate is that she’s in a pack. The problem with Kate is that Derek can still remember how she smelled. Can remember how her touch was electric and her skin was soft and her arms were strong. Derek can remember how lust had still curled itself in his stomach when she cornered him in the grocery store, making him ill with regret.

“So what,” Stiles asks at night, “do you just go over to her house, and, I don’t know, wham bam thank you ma’am shoot her in the face?”

Derek frowns at Stiles’s choice of words; he can taste ash and bile in his mouth. “Not exactly,” he grits out. “We need to get her alone, away from her pack.”

“Oh sure,” Stiles agrees brightly, sarcasm dripping into his voice. “That’ll be easy. Let’s just call her up and ask her out for coffee.”

“You’re not helping,” Derek points out.

Stiles smiles and Derek pushes aside thoughts like _roguish_ and _charming_ because that’s exactly what he thought about Kate in the beginning. “Sure I am,” Stiles cheerfully disagrees. “I’m eliminating the ridiculous.”

“Uh-huh,” Derek agrees and he is saved from having to find Stiles actually _helpful_ by the Sheriff coming upstairs and demanding if Stiles remembers that it’s a school night, son, get to bed.

“Sure thing,” Stiles says, arm brushing against Derek as he clambers off his bed. Derek wonders why his touch lingers, like the soft echo of a kiss, and if it’s always been that way. Good timing has never been Derek’s strong suit.

 

***

 

There’s not much to do but plan during the day, when Stiles is at school. Derek drives back to his old house and checks the supplies. He pulls up maps of the woods and runs the trails he used to know by heart.

The Argents are the only pack for miles; there are no clear markers of where their territory ends and where it begins. Derek figures that it’s all fair game. He’ll wait until after the full moon, when he knows the wolf is strongest, when Kate wouldn’t dream of hunting without her pack. Four days then.

There are things to worry about until then, like separating Kate from her pack; like keeping Stiles safe; like making sure that Chris and the rest of the pack don’t come after Derek and Stiles, when it’s all said and done. That’s the problem with these things—the hunters work off a code and wolves live off blood. Derek’s never been too great at planning ahead, so he just doesn’t think about it.

 

***

 

“What’s up, buttercup?” Stiles asks and Derek jumps in his seat, startled.

“I’m following Kate,” Derek whispers furiously, in the face of Stiles’s laughter. “Now _shut up_ and _go away_.”

Because Stiles lives to be a walking contradiction, he gets in the damn car and says, “You know, a black Camaro in a high school parking lot isn’t exactly subtle.”

“And the douche bag with the Porsche is?” Derek has been sitting here long enough to witness some rich asshole kid make out with his tiny girlfriend against the side of a car no high schooler should own.

“Ugh, Jackson. What a dick.” Stiles agrees. “But my point stands. You look like _Knight Rider_.”

Derek glowers. He had fucking _loved_ that show as a kid, watching late-night repeats over summer break. Not that Stiles needs to know that. “If you’re going to stay, the least you can do is be quiet.”

Stiles, for once in his life, chooses to level Derek with a look that says _are you shitting me_ rather than comment on it. Although that doesn’t actually mean he _listens_. “It’s going to look _way_ less suspicious if we’re together, you know. Like you’re picking me up or something.”

“You have your own car,” Derek counters because a) Stiles has his own car, and b) to avoid thinking about why that makes him feel like so dirty.

Stiles smiles, simple and happy. “There’s no joy in your soul. You are joyless. You’re also not going to take out a freaking _werewolf_ at a high school. So start your car, turn that frown upside down, and let’s get out of here. I’ve got a plan.”

“Of course you do,” Derek agrees, already starting the car.

 

***

 

Stiles’s plan is pizza and _Mario Kart_.

“You just need something nonviolent in your life,” Stiles explains, licking sauce off his hands. “Otherwise, this serial killer chic thing you’ve got going for you, it just might stick.”

Derek does not say that this _kill the wolf_ plan is more likely than not going to end with Derek dead in a ditch somewhere. Instead he says, “Your dad’s going to come home and demand a slice,” just to be an ass.

“It’s like being a Debbie downer is in your _blood_ ,” Stiles grouses, playfully kicking Derek’s leg. “Look, you said it yourself; we have to wait until after the full moon anyways. Taking one night off to _not plan_ a homicide is generally considered a good thing.”

“You don’t have to help me,” Derek tells him, wishing he knew how to say _you can’t come back from this_ and have Stiles take it to heart, turn away, and never look back.

Stiles rolls his eyes and shoves the controller into Derek’s hands. “So you’ve said. Now shut up and man up. Your losing streak is getting embarrassing.”

He’ll never admit it, but something loosens in Derek’s chest. Maybe, when this whole mess is taken care of, then maybe he can have this. Maybe he can be happy.

 

***

 

Adrian Harris is dead in the morning.

The Sheriff holds his phone in the crook of his neck, tying his boots and asking in somber tones, “And you’re sure? It’s another animal attack?”

Derek sits at the breakfast table and feels like he’s going to be sick. Stiles sits next to him, quiet, face gaunt, and he looks as small as Derek has ever seen him.

“Okay, alright, I’m on my way,” the Sheriff says at last. He looks tired. He puts the phone back in its cradle on the wall, shoulders heavy with guilt and responsibility, all those things that he and Derek share and don’t share at all. “I don’t know when I’ll be back,” he says to Stiles more than Derek. And then, “Promise me you won’t do anything stupid. Both of you.”

They can’t promise that but they both nod anyways. It’s the only thing to do.

 

***

 

There is the sound of the front door closing. The sound of the Sheriff starting his car and driving away, driving to where a man was murdered. Then there is nothing but the sound of their own breathing, something Adrian Harris can’t do anymore.

“Could we have saved him?” Stiles asks, voice soft, the humming of the refrigerator loud in Derek’s ears.

Derek tries not to think about all the people he could have saved, but it’s a fact that’s settled into him. All the lives that are lost because Derek was careless, Derek was foolish, Derek was young and full of lust—they live in the spaces between Derek’s ribs, in the hollow of his throat, in his fingers and his toes. Derek doesn’t think about it, but it’s part of him. Adrian Harris is a new name to add to the list, and Derek won’t think about that either, will instead pin the name to him like a scarlet letter. _Could we have saved him_? It’s irrelevant. They didn’t.

Stiles takes one breath, then another. Words stick in Derek’s throat. He’s never been good at them, even before the fire. There’s no way to explain to someone that there is blood on your hands and it will never come off, that you can’t change the past, and have them understand that it’s not the end of you

 But before Derek can try, because this is _Stiles_ , this is little Aloysius full of so many questions who just wanted to be Derek’s friend, Stiles is saying. “We could have, what am I saying. We could have saved him. We _should have_ saved him. Harris was a dick, don’t get me wrong, but we could have done something.” He takes a breath, but it sounds like a sob. His arms shake. “Derek, _fuck_ , Derek, I shouldn’t have stopped you. Jesus.”

“No,” Derek says, word sharp on his tongue. “Stiles, this is not your fault.” There is no one to blame but Derek. He will not let Stiles shoulder this guilt.

“Bullshit,” Stiles challenges, voice shaking, eyes bright.

Derek puts his hand on Stiles’s shoulder. Holds him steady. He does not know how to comfort people, but he knows Stiles. Knew him as a little boy, when his mother used to hold him close when he cried and whisper _hush, Aloysius, I’ve got you_ into his ear. “There’s still two more lives we can save. Think about that instead. She’s panicking.”

Stiles makes a sound that Derek thinks could be a laugh, but he’s not sure. “ _I’m_ panicking.”

Derek rubs his hand across Stiles back, “It’s okay,” he says. “I’ve got you.” And he means it.

 

***

 

Stiles cuts class. Stiles never cuts class—his dad’s the Sheriff. Derek doesn’t really blame him. Instead, he takes him to the woods, to the house on the hill where he once lived and where his sister was once buried.

Derek hands a sixteen-year-old a gun and teaches him how to pull the trigger. Derek gives Stiles a lethal weapon and teaches him how to put down a feral dog.

There is no more time for regrets.

 

***

 

"I have an idea," says Stiles that night. The Sheriff is still at work. He called around five, told them not to wait up, and Stiles had comforted his dad with false cheer, told him that he and Derek would be okay, reminded his dad that vegetables were a thing. In that moment it had ceased to be amazing to Derek how Stiles could just smile and put on this mask, like he was a normal, happy teen. Like Derek hadn’t spent the day with Stiles in the woods, teaching him how to kill a man. Stiles had been quiet all day, focused in a way that Derek hasn't seen before. It should not be so easy to pretend that everything is okay.

"Is it pizza and _Mario Kart_?" Derek jokes, the words falling flat on his lips.

Stiles smiles, as hollow and perfunctory as Derek's joke. "It’s the winter formal on Friday, which means that the Argents are going to be distracted with Allison going and every cop in town is going to be there, making sure a mountain lion doesn’t run off with one of the students, or whatever. We can draw out Kate then."

It's a good plan, as crazy suicidal plans go. Although. "You sure they're still going to have the dance after this?"

Stiles rolls his eyes, a gesture that somehow involves his entire body. “Dude, schools _love_ making sure that everything stays normal. They’re all convinced we’re delicate flowers, or something, like if we don’t have the dance we’re all going to be at home sobbing uncontrollably and injecting heroin into our eyes.”

“Well then,” Derek says dryly, “if you’re sure.”

When Stiles smiles, lopsided, eyes crinkling, there’s a lightness to him that wasn’t there when he was talking to his dad. Derek’s not really sure what caused it, but he’s glad it’s there.

 

***

 

(The Sheriff comes home close to midnight, Stiles and Derek watching QVC because neither of them can sleep. The Sheriff doesn’t ask; he raised Stiles after all.)

 

***

 

Stiles goes to school the next day. There’s nothing really more to do.

 

***

 

“What do you mean you’re not going?” comes Scott’s voice, shrill. Derek doesn’t really know how the Argent girl puts up with it—it offends Derek’s ears and he’s _human_.

Derek walks into the living room in time to catch Stiles’ shrug. “Man, you’re going to be there with Allison and Lydia’s going with _Jackson_. Besides,” Stiles fixes a _wicked_ grin on Derek, “Derek said he’d let me drive the Camaro.”

If Derek smacks Stiles up the side of the head on his way through the living room to the kitchen, then so be it. He thinks that if Stiles’s can still laugh like he does now, then maybe all this Kate bullshit will be worth it.

 

***

 

Morning comes and Derek has an attack of conscience because of course he does.

He’d never been the coldest Hale. He could never make the tough calls and was always thankful that it was his mother—that it would one day be Laura—who had to make the hard choices for him. Family came first for Derek and pack came first for wolves and, sometimes, alone in his room, Derek would wonder if those weren’t the same things.

Stiles isn’t family, but he and the Sheriff are the closest things that Derek has now. Stiles is only sixteen-years-old and he’s never been in love, not that first love was exactly a whirlwind for Derek, but Stiles has these big brown eyes and these expressive hands and all this life left to live. Killing, even killing a wolf that has crossed the line, it changes a person. That isn’t who Stiles is and Derek can make sure that Stiles never has to have blood on his hands.

Besides, this is about Derek and Kate. She started it, but Derek is going to be sure he’s the one who ends it.

 

***

 

Stiles goes to school and says, “See you tonight, right?” before he leaves, backpack slung across his shoulder, car keys in his hand.

_He’s only sixteen_ , Derek thinks. He remembers being sixteen, feeling too big for his own body, too small for the world. Derek did a lot of stupid shit at sixteen. He was nowhere near as brave as Stiles.

“Just go to school,” Derek tells him, knocking him on the shoulder. “Stop worrying about me.”

“Aw, but honey,” Stiles says, shit eating grin on his face, “someone needs to look out for you.”

Derek throws the roll of paper towels at Stiles’s head as he ducks out of the house, laughing the entire way. Derek doesn’t think about how it’s possibly true. There is a code and Derek is the last living Hale. There is no one else.

 

***

 

_Don’t come looking for me. Stay out of this, Stiles. I should have never brought you in anyways. Either way, it’s over now_.

Derek never used to be one for leaving notes, but he remembers what if felt like to find Laura’s note, scribbled on the back of their shopping list. He doesn’t know what he’d do if she’d just disappeared, left nothing behind but a pair of dirty converse by the front door and bras hanging over the radiator.

Stiles had been good to Derek. He deserves a good-bye.

 

***

 

There’s more in the tunnels of the smoldering Hale House than just guns and ammo. It’s just, well, Derek was fifteen, and the night vision goggles and emitters were for his parents and aunts and uncles and Laura. Derek could ride a four-wheeler and play tapes of wolves howling. He was taught how to fight with a knife and fight with his hands and how to make wolfsbane bullets. They have been enough, up until now.

But if Derek is going to do this, if he is going to take revenge, then he needs every trick his parents died before they can teach him.

 

***

 

He really isn’t all that surprised when Kate finds him.

Kate’s always been one step ahead of him. Derek’s always had terrible luck.

 

***

 

“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,” Kate coos. Derek can taste bile and remembers every time he ever woke up thinking that he loved her. She has him strung up in the tunnels of Derek’s old house because of course she knows about them—Derek had shown them to her himself.

“Are you going to kill me?” Derek asks feeling bitter and resigned. There’s a headache blooming at the base of his skull, a dull ache beginning to throb up towards his temples. He’s thankful for the dim light of the dungeon. “Or are you going to talk about it first?”

Kate laughs. “Oh, sweetie, no. I’m not some hunter putting you down like an animal.” She trails a finger down the line of his stomach and it takes everything Derek has not to flinch. She grins when she feels his muscles tense under the thin fabric of his Henley. “You grew up in all the right places, didn’t you? Don’t worry,” she adds, double-checking his manacles, her breath hot on his ear, “this is going to be _fun_.”

“Somehow,” Derek spits out through his fear and anger and self-loathing, “I doubt that.”

Kate smiles like a wolf—hungry and dangerous. “Babe, you have no idea.”

 

***

 

Derek was tazed once, as a kid. It wasn’t a training exercise or anything, just an honest accident—Derek and his cousins playing with things they didn’t understand. It was only five seconds, in the end, but it was the longest five seconds of Derek’s life.

This time it goes on for minutes, seconds dragging out into years. Derek shakes in his chains in the basement of his old house and tries not to cry out, to let Kate win. It doesn’t work. Derek didn’t really think it would.

 

***

 

“Know what’s crazy?” Kate asks, fingers tapping against the table. “Before I killed your sister, she was asking questions about the fire, like she didn’t know. Did you tell anybody?”

Derek looks away, locks his jaw, doesn’t answer. Laura never knew. Stiles doesn’t know. It was Derek’s fault and it’s Derek’s guilt to bear. He doesn’t need Kate reminding him of his past mistakes. Of how she’s systematically killed anyone who could ever link her to the crime. Of how when she finally gets bored of torturing him, she’s going to kill him.

“Oh sweetie, that’s just a lot of guilt to keep buried,” she tells him with mock sympathy, standing. “It’s not all your fault—you got tricked by a pretty face.” She smiles, pleased with herself, and steps closer. “It happens. Handsome young hunter mistakenly falls in love with a super hot girl who happens to be a werewolf. Is that ironic?”

He shrinks back in his chains as far as he can, wants to get his body as far away from her as possible. “What do you want with me? Everyone’s dead. No one knows the truth.”

“You hunters say you have code,” she tells him, voice cold, and Derek can remember the sound of her laugh when he’d asked her what she’d done. He can remember the way she said _sorry, baby, but I don’t think it’s going to work out_ , and all Derek could taste was bile and smoke. “Well I have one too: pack first. I’m going to make an example of you and keep my family safe.”

“It’s not going to work,” Derek says, determined still not to let Kate win. She has already taken so much from him. “More hunters are going to come.”

Kate pouts and holds up Derek’s cell phone. “Zero missed calls. I don’t think anyone misses you at all.”

 

***

 

There is pain and there is silence and there is the sound of Kate’s laugh. None of it hurts as much as abject failure.

Derek wonders if, when, Kate finally kills him, what Laura will say.

 

***

 

When Derek first sees Stiles he figures he’s just imagining it. Stiles standing in the doorway of the dungeon, wearing a red hoodie and muddy sneakers and a horrified expression. But then he says, “Oh my God, Derek, what did she do?” and Derek knows that he’s not imagining anything at all.

“Go away, Stiles,” he tells him, voice raspy from screaming. “She’s going to come back.” There’s panic rising in Derek’s chest, overcoming his fear. Overcoming that initial jolt of hope he had when he realized that Stiles was real.

But Stiles doesn’t listen, he never listens. “Derek, Derek, oh my God,” he chants over and over again, moving across the cell. His arms are on Derek’s face, his wrists checking to see if he is okay. His breath is warm on Derek’s cheek, comforting.

“Run, Stiles,” Derek tells him again, terrified that Kate will come back and catch him. “What are you doing here?”

Derek can see enough of Stiles’s face to see him roll his eyes. “I’m rescuing you, dude,” Stiles tells him like it’s obvious. “You’re freaking handcuffed in a dungeon and I had to bribe Danny to even find you. I’m not leaving.”

“Do you even have the key?” Derek asks, feeling detached and strange and resigned to Stiles’s obstinance.

Stiles grins, reaching into his pockets and holding out a set of lock picks. “I’m the son of the sheriff. I got this.”

 

***

 

It takes fifteen minutes and some fairly inventive cursing on Stiles’s part—Derek’s heart racing the entire time, his ears straining for any sound that might signal Kate’s return—but Stiles gets the cuffs unlocked. Derek rubs at his aching wrists before he peels the electrodes off from his ribs.

“Dude,” Stiles says. “Oh my God, dude, was she _electrocuting_ you?”

Derek shrugs. “She’s done worse.” It’s both true and untrue, but Stiles, for all he’s sixteen and annoying as hell, is the closet Derek has ever come to a secret keeper.

Stiles rolls his eyes, overly dramatic like this is them at home fighting over who finished the last of the milk. “When this is over we have got to work on your sense of self.” He grabs at Derek’s arm and tugs. “Come on. We’ve got to get going. Scott and Allison are waiting outside.”

And because Derek has been living with Stiles for weeks now, because he knew him back when he was a little kid with undiagnosed ADHD, because he was just kidnapped and tortured by his murderous ex-girlfriend, he follows.

 

***

 

It takes exactly long enough for them to make their way out of the tunnels and into the cool night air for what Stiles said to sink in. And then it’s too late.

There, just up the hill, in front of the house where Derek grew up, stand the Argents—Chris and Kate and Allison all standing as far apart from each other as they can. Allison is trying to block Scott from her family, but it doesn’t look like Scott has any intention of standing down. The moonlight reflects off their claws and fangs and preternaturally bright eyes.

“You brought Scott and Allison?” Derek hisses, hoping the wolves are too wrapped up in each other to hear him.

“Well I wasn’t coming alone and I’m not about to call my dad out to get murdered by werewolves.” Stiles spits back, loud enough to draw the wolves’ attention.

“No one’s getting murdered,” Chris Argent says, voice calm and steady and not quite humorless. He doesn’t seem particularly surprised to see them.

“Aw, Chris, don’t say that.” Kate smiles, eyes shining blue and cold. “The night’s still young.”

Derek can feel his heart beating in the back of his throat, but when he speaks his voice is steady. “The only person who’s going to die is you.” He takes a step closer, puts himself between Kate and Stiles. There is nothing Derek can do about Scott, not from here, but he has Allison to keep him safe.

Chris shoots Derek a look, like whatever good humor he has is going to run out soon, but Allison draws his attention back away. “You still haven’t told me what’s going on, dad,” she says, sounding a little desperate and a little like she hates herself for it. “Why are we even here? What were you doing with him, Kate.”

Kate smiles bigger and takes a step forward. “He’s a hunter, sweetie,” she answers, voice honey sweet. Allison and Scott both take a step back, wary. “The big bad. The Hales.” She wiggles her fingers in the air like she’s telling a ghost story to a child. “I’m just looking out of my family.”

Werewolves can smell fear, but Derek isn’t afraid. He is, however, an orphan who got his whole family killed. He’s in the woods with Stiles who might be his only friend and he doesn’t have a weapon and he’s probably, definitely going to die, but Derek isn’t afraid. “You didn’t have to kill my family to do it,” he growls. He doesn’t know if it’s what he’s said or the fact he’s actually moving closer to the wolves, but Chris jerks like he’s just been shot.

“They died in a fire, Hale,” he says.

“You sure about that?” Stiles asks, standing right at Derek’s back because he’s apparently crazier than Derek’s ever given him credit for. “What does she have to say about it?”

Derek tries to push him away, to keep him safe, but Stiles just pushes back. Refuses to leave Derek’s side.

“That’s not true, is it, Kate?” Allison asks, pleads. “Kate?”

“They’re _hunters_ ,” Kate answers, all sweetness gone from her voice now. “I was protecting the pack. I was only doing what I was told.”

“You’re not protecting us, Kate, you’re _provoking them_ ,” Chris growls, and Derek knows wolves well enough to know how this night’s going to end.

Derek spins and shoves Stiles away. “Run, Stiles,” he tells him. “Get as far away from here as possible.”

Stiles looks like he’s going to argue, but then Kate roars and Stiles bolts. Doesn’t look back.

 

***

 

There are fangs and there are shouts and there is blood.

In the end, there is Allison sobbing on the ground, the uncontrollable tears of a teenager who knows that her life has changed and there is no going back. Derek knows that feeling, has cried those tears. He tells himself that she still has her parents and siblings, if she has any, and that Derek has not ruined her life like Kate did for him.

He feels detached and strange—relieved, but not happy. Everyone he loves is still dead. This is not the victory Derek intended, but he doesn’t really know why he thought he would feel any other way.

 

****

 

“That’s it,” Chris says. There is blood on his hands, on the front of his shirt. His teenage daughter is crying on the forest floor, her boyfriend holding her, smoothing down her hair. “We’re done here.”

Neither one of them are looking at the body. Neither one of them can bring themselves to look at each other. Derek’s arm hurts from where Kate scratched it and his wrists hurt from where she shackled him.

“I don’t have a problem with you,” Derek tells him. “And I have a code.”

Chris smiles. It is a hopeless thing. “Just as long as we have an understanding.”

What Derek wants to say is _thank you_. He wants to say _I didn’t mean for it to be you_ and _were you really blind to her for all these years_. But he doesn’t. “I won’t bother your pack. You have my word,” he promises.

Allison is still crying and in the distance Derek can hear the faint sound of sirens. “See that you don’t,” Chris says. “I have to go take care of my family.”

Chris’s words from just a few weeks ago echo in Derek’s head. _But you don’t have much of that these days, do you?_ Derek doesn’t have any family left but he is well versed in loss. He knows what havoc Kate can leave in her wake.

The word _sorry_ rests at the tip of Derek’s tongue, but he knows that it is nowhere big enough to fix what he helped to break. But then Chris turns towards his daughter, his family, and Derek is dismissed. Released. Set free.

Derek is left standing alone in front of the burnt husk of his childhood home, waiting for the sirens to come, because there always has to be a reckoning.

 

***

 

(Kate is dead, but he didn’t kill her. Either way, Laura is revenged. His family is revenged. Either way, he’d broken up another family. All Derek has ever left in his wake is blood on other people’s hands.

Allison won’t stop crying and all Derek can think is, _that’s my fault too_.)

 

***

 

It’s messy, awkward, and terrible to explain. Derek keeps having flashbacks to when the Sheriff arrested him for Laura’s death, except now the Sheriff keeps calling him _son_ and wrapped him in a hug when he first arrived on the scene.

Allison and Scott cleared out before the cops got there, sent away by Chris who is proving he is nothing if not a competent liar. In the face of the entire Beacon Hills Sheriff’s department, Stiles helps out the best he can, providing his father with all of Laura’s notes—the insurance fraud, the hired arsonists, Harris’s description of Kate.

Derek stays silent, for the most part. He speaks when spoken to and says he doesn’t want to talk about it and that yeah, Kate probably did burn his family home to the ground.

Everyone looks at him with sad eyes except for Chris, who won’t look at him at all.

 

***

 

_Animal attack_ is the lie everyone chooses to believe, in the end.

She killed my family, Derek thinks. Kate killed his family and then her family killed her. It doesn’t feel as good as he thought it would.

 

***

 

Stiles hangs around while a paramedic bandages Derek’s arm and makes snide comments about Derek getting into a fistfight with a mountain lion.

“The only reason I’m not mad at you,” Stiles explains, overly casual, “is because my dad did not end up getting murdered in the woods.”

“You can still be mad at me,” Derek tells him. Stiles shouldn’t be risking his or anyone else’s life to save Derek’s neck.

“Oh but how could I stay mad at a face like that?” Stiles laughs, ruffling Derek’s hair and ignoring the completely despairing look the paramedic shoots him. “But seriously, I’m glad you’re not dead, dude.”

The _thank you_ gets stuck somewhere in the back of Derek’s throat. Derek’s never saved anyone, only ever gotten them killed. “You’re just happy you’ll have your Xbox back to yourself,” Derek says instead.

Something that looks a lot like shock passes across Stiles face, his jaw dropping. “Dude, you’re not leaving,” Stiles tells him. “Pull your head out of your ass.”

Derek gives Stiles a look. “I’m done here. Kate was the only reason I came back.”

“Well you’re absolutely crazy if you think dad’s letting you anywhere out of his sight now.” Stiles bumps his arm against Derek’s and then rests there, a warm weight, steady and settled. It’s the complete opposite of how Stiles acts, but for some reason Derek thinks it’s his favorite part about him—how Stiles is like an anchor, like north on a compass. How Stiles is always there and came for him and looks at Derek like he still remembers who he was before the fire.

“I’m sure you can find a job as the Dread Pirate Roberts or something now that you found your six-fingered man. You’ve got the eyebrows for it,” Stiles adds.

“Stiles,” Derek protests. Even when Laura was alive, Derek didn’t have huge plans for his life. Between the trust fund and the insurance settlement, they didn’t really have to work much, and the library in the town where they finally stopped in was pretty great. Derek didn’t really have plans past that besides having Laura yell at him about lost potential and slumming it out at the community college. But Laura’s dead and Kate’s dead and Derek is apparently going to keep on living. He’s starting to think that maybe the universe wants to keep him around. Or, at least Stiles does.

Stiles rolls his eyes and stands up. “Dad’s going to be here all night and you have just suffered a highly traumatic incident. I say we eat curly fries and not talk about our feelings.” He tugs on Derek’s hand, gentle, mindful of his chafed wrists that the snarky EMT had just rolled his eyes at. “Come on, dude. Stay.”

Derek thinks about growing up in Beacon Hills, running through the preserve and playing lacrosse. He thinks about the Stilinskis’ house—quiet and loved and welcoming. And Derek thinks life has been pretty shit up until and including this moment, but no one’s ever asked him to stay before. He’s still not sure he deserves what Stiles is offering.

“I’ll buy you the curly fries,” Stiles promises in the wake of Derek’s silence and Derek reflexively rolls his eyes.

“You’re going to die of heart disease before you even graduate.” He informs him. The words _yes, please, I’ll stay_ hum through Derek with the beating of his heart, but he can’t bring himself to say them.

But Stiles must hear them anyways, because he smiles like it’s Christmas. “Guess you really are going to have to stay then.”

Derek has to tramp down his own smile. “I’m going to make you eat Brussels sprouts for a week,” he threatens instead.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re all talk big guy,” Stiles says. “Come one, let’s go home.”

It’s been years since Derek has had a home. He thinks that this time, he’s going to do it better. He’s sure of it.


End file.
